


Asking Questions

by cosmic_llin



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Childhood, Early Work, Gen, Journalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-07
Updated: 2006-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People want to know why she asks so many questions. The answer she gives is not the whole truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asking Questions

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by something I read a while back. (I can't remember now where it was, so if anyone knows, please tell me!). Whoever wrote it was disappointed with the fact that Sarah was a journalist, because it made it seem like, because she was a girl, she couldn't just be curious for her own sake, that the writers felt they had to give her the extra motivation of looking for stories for her work. I see where that person was coming from, but I read it a little differently, and this is my take on the question, using a quote from Sarah and the Doctor's first conversation, in The Time Warrior.
> 
> This was originally written back in 2006. I'm posting it in 2010 with minor edits to make it canon-compliant.

‘Why do you ask so many questions?’ he had asked, peering bemusedly at her.

There were so many answers to that. If she had been answering it truthfully, she would hardly have known where to begin. As it was, she didn’t know if she could trust him, and so she gave her usual answer.

‘Because I’m a journalist.’

If he had gone a little further and asked her why she was a journalist, she would probably have told him it was because she asked so many questions.

The questions had certainly come first. As a child she had been curious – nosy, grown-ups called it. She always wanted to know what was happening and why, and how, and often about things that weren’t appropriate topics for young girls.

Don’t ask so many questions, Sarah Jane. Nobody likes a busybody, Sarah Jane. You talk too much, Sarah Jane. You’re such a tomboy, Sarah Jane. Boys will never like you if you run around climbing trees and getting into trouble all the time.

She hadn’t been a tomboy, not as she understood the term. She had always worn dresses and liked the things girls were supposed to like – dolls and clothes and hairstyles and things like that. But she didn’t see why she couldn’t like those things and be interested in the world around her at the same time. And she needed to climb trees to see things that were far away.

She had asked Aunt Lavinia about it, one day, when she was eleven. Aunt Lavinia was a scientist. She had a labcoat and sometimes she let Sarah wear it, even though it was much too big. Aunt Lavinia had told her that sometimes girls weren’t supposed to ask too many questions, but that didn’t mean that she shouldn’t. She told her that science was all about asking questions, and some people didn’t like Aunt Lavinia being a scientist, but she went ahead and did it anyway.

For a while, Sarah had an ambition to follow her aunt into science, but her science marks at school were abysmal, and besides, she wanted to ask questions about people and places and events that happened, not about atoms and gravity and things.

She had always been good at English – her spelling was the best in the class, and everyone said that she wrote lovely imaginative stories. At some point she became aware that the articles in newspapers didn’t get there by themselves, that somebody had to write them. Somebody had to go and find the things out before they could write them down and put them in the papers.

Journalists, as she soon discovered they were called, wouldn’t get told off for wanting to know things. They would be allowed into places where interesting things were going on. They would see things that other people wouldn’t see. They would visit new places and try new things.

When she got the job on Metropolitan Magazine, it was more than just the first step in what she hoped would be a long and successful career. It was validation. It was an excuse. Now, when people asked her why she asked so many questions, she could say, in that oh-so-casual way: ‘Because I’m a journalist.’

And it was true. But it wasn’t the real story.


End file.
